Analysis
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly dismissed reports that the company's partnership with Waymo is fraying, The Verge reported on the company's earnings call day. The comments landed on a rough session: Uber shares fell roughly 7% on weaker-than-expected forward guidance despite revenue growth, per CNBC.
The strategic question underneath is whether Uber ends up as the demand layer for autonomy or gets disintermediated by it. Uber's position is that riders open one app, and every AV operator needs that demand. Waymo's position, increasingly, is that it can operate its own app in the markets it cares about -- which it already does in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“Amazon's Zoox said it begins charging for robotaxi rides in Las Vegas on August 10, its first paid service.”
The CEO's denial did not answer that question; a competitor's launch date did. Amazon's Zoox said it begins charging for robotaxi rides in Las Vegas on August 10, its first paid service. Zoox is not on Uber's platform. Every operator that launches its own paid consumer service without Uber makes the aggregation thesis a little weaker, regardless of what any single partnership does.
The counterweight to the bearish read: aggregation has held so far. Uber has signed AV partnerships across Waymo, WeRide, Pony.ai, Nuro and others, and in the markets where Waymo runs both its own app and Uber-dispatched vehicles, both channels have filled. Utilization, not app ownership, is what determines AV unit economics, and Uber supplies utilization more cheaply than a standalone consumer app does.
What to watch: whether the Waymo agreement is renewed on the same terms when it comes up, whether Zoox appears on any aggregator by year-end, and whether Uber's AV-supplied trip volume is disclosed as a percentage in the next quarter. That percentage is the only number that settles the argument.